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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book... “the Lighthouse” Down in the Dirt, v152 (the December 2017 Issue)  You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:  |
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Wanting Out
Peter Gannon
When the train was between stations, Louis felt a jolt. The brakes screeched—the wail sounded like a pack of starved coyotes—and the train began to slow. Seconds later, Louis heard a thud—it was monstrous—and he felt the cabin rock as if it had been sideswiped by a wrecking ball. The train rattled and hissed like a venomous snake moving in for the kill and then came to an abrupt stop, causing Louis and the other passengers to lean forward as if they’d been violently shoved.
What happened?
Louis straightened himself; his floppy brown hair was in his eyes. He brushed it aside and looked around the cabin. “Wonder what that was,” someone said. People started shrugging their shoulders. “Beats me,” a woman with a withered face said. Finally, a man with hound-dog eyes smiled and said, “Turbulence?” Everybody laughed.
Outside Louis’s window, the Hudson River was trembling. In the distance, a lone red buoy bobbed in the water. Behind it stood the eroded riverbank, high enough for cliff diving, Louis thought.
He looked at his phone. More Syrian refugees had arrived in Sweden. One of the Manson family murderers was up for parole again.
What was the deal with the train? Where the hell was the ticket collector?
Then a staticky voice came on the loudspeaker. “Good morning, everyone. We’re sorry about the delay. We’re investigating a situation right now and , , , um, when we know a bit more, we’ll fill you in.”
There was a collective groan. Louis joined in on it. A man in a wool cap flung his paperback in the air as if to say, I give up. How long would the delay be? Louis looked at his Seiko. Oh, no. He was going to be late. His boss Jason would be fuming. Would Jason fire him? Who knew? But at least, this time, Louis could legitimately blame his tardiness on the train.
He waited, staring out the fingerprint-smeared window. A barge the size of a battleship was moving slowly down the river. Mounds of dirty snow the size of haystacks adorned the riverbank. Ten more minutes passed, and some of the commuters started complaining: “Can we move this thing along?” “I wish we knew what was going on?”
Then a faint voice behind Louis said, “Hey, there’s an ambulance attendant and a police officer on the tracks.”
Everyone turned toward the windows. A few commuters, who were seated near the aisle, stood and leaned over toward windows.
“We hit someone!” a woman yelled.
“I hope it’s just a deer,” said a shaggy-haired man who was double-fisting his coffee.
“An ambulance attendant means a person,” another voice said.
“Oh, how terrible.”
“This is going to take forever.”
Louis hoped they were wrong but there was indeed an ambulance attendant and a police officer on the tracks. He checked his phone. There was nothing on the local news about the delay. Then another staticky voice came on the loudspeaker. “We’re sorry for the inconvenience but we’re going to have to disembark and board another train. This will be a little tricky so it may take some time. When we figure out the logistics, we’ll let you know.”
Three and a half hours later, just before 11:00 a.m., Louis arrived at work. To avoid running into his boss Jason, he entered through the office’s side door. When he got to his cubicle, he stuffed his worn overcoat in his locker-sized closet. His polyester dress shirt was untucked. He blamed it on his growing belly hang and resolved to start losing weight on Monday. This Monday. No “ifs” or “buts” about it. Monday. After doing a 360 to ensure that no one was looking—his colleagues were either on the phone or making goo-goo eyes at their computer screens—he unbuckled his belt and tucked in his shirt. He then collapsed in his chair as if someone had angrily pushed him in it. A few minutes later, while he was logging onto his computer, Jason appeared. “I was looking for you,” Jason said.
“You didn’t get my text?”
Jason, who had a boyish face and athletic physique, lifted his chin like a drill sergeant. “I can’t keep doing this, Louis.”
“My train hit someone.”
“I need you to start putting that motion together.”
“I wouldn’t lie about something like that, Jason. You can see for yourself.” Louis held up his phone where he had downloaded the news story.
“When is the deadline to serve the motion?”
Louis began shuffling through his cluttered desk. “I wrote it down somewhere.”
“It’s next Thursday. You should know that.”
“I sent the exhibits out to be copied yesterday.”
“Why aren’t you copying them yourself?”
“The file is like twenty red wells.”
“Did you hear what I said the other day about containing costs?”
“With the deadline looming, I didn’t want to take any chances.”
“I didn’t approve the expenditure.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll call the printing company and cancel the job.”
That night, on the train ride home, Louis looked at his phone and learned more about what had happened that morning. A high school boy, whose name was being withheld, had walked onto the railroad tracks. When the engineer saw the boy, he tried to stop the train but couldn’t in time.
Who in their right mind would walk onto busy railroad tracks? It sounded like a suicide. What had driven the boy to do it?
From time to time, Louis would see high school boys on the train. Most of them had bad haircuts and carried heavy backpacks. High school could be tough. For him, it had been a nightmare. Thirty years ago, if you were gay like Louis, you were mocked. Fag. Fairy. Queer. But Louis never thought of suicide. But he could see how someone might.
That weekend, Louis drove out to Long Island to visit his 85-year-old father. His dad, a former insurance executive, was widowed and more or less confined to an assisted living facility. The TV was on in his dad’s living room and his dad was seated where he spent most of his time: in his recliner, his feet, the size of an NBA player’s, up on the footrest. “Glad you’re here, Louie. Could you close those window blinds? The dishwasher’s making a funny noise; you’ll need to check it out. Oh, could you pull off my socks?”
Louis had a couple of grocery bags in his hands and he placed them on the floor. He took off his overcoat and closed the window blinds.
“My socks,” his father said, pointing at his feet.
“Patience, Dad.” Louis walked over to his father, who had more hairs coming out of his nostrils than his head, and pulled off one sock, then the other.
“You keep gaining weight,” his dad said, twinkling his toes. “You’re bursting at the seams. If one of those buttons pops off your shirt, it may hit me in the eye.” He laughed heartily.
“I have a lot going on, Dad.”
“How’s the job?”
“It’s okay but the new boss is young and aggressive. People are saying he wants to clean house.” Louis looked at his dad’s socks as if they were bloody body parts. He grimaced and tossed them over his shoulders. “He’s constantly on me. My commute’s long , , ,”
“How long?”
“I told you. Over an hour to Grand Central but the subway could be another twenty minutes.”
“Not so bad.”
“But, if I’m a minute late, Dad, I hear about it, and there are always delays. The other day some high school kid threw himself in front of the train.”
“Well, you should be on time.”
“I’ll stay at work for as long as he wants. I’ll work more than my eight hours but , , ,” Louis closed his eyes. He had tried everything to gain Jason’s respect but nothing he ever did seemed good enough. When it came to Louis’s intricately-woven tapestry of paralegal work—his impeccable drafting of pleadings, his eagle-eyed citation checks, his profoundly persuasive court correspondence—all Jason wanted to focus on were a few barely noticeable loose threads. “I wish he’d just get off my case already.”
“If you had a family, Louie, you’d be motivated. What ever happened to that girl Jane?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Janice?”
“The one who always looked sick , , ,”
“The girl I took to the prom?”
“Weren’t you engaged to her?”
“No. Never.”
“You should have gone to law school. I once thought about going to law school, did you know that?”
Did Louis know that? His father talked about it all the time. “Yeah, I think you may have mentioned that once.”
“But I was already making great money, so what was the point?”
“Let me put the groceries away, Dad.”
“Did you get my baked beans? With the pork bits?”
“I did.” Louis picked up the grocery bags as if they were heavy buckets of water.
“How old are you now, Louie?”
“I’ll be forty seven.”
“It’s probably too late.”
“For what?”
“Law school.”
“I’m not going to law school, Dad.”
“All that money I spent on prep school and college , , , You’re unhappy.”
“Dad, please.” Louis started making his way to the kitchen.
“Hold on a second,” his father said.
Louis stopped.
“So, when are you getting me out of here?” his father asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“I hate this place. I miss my home. All my memories are there.”
“We sold the house, Dad. You’re not leaving. We already discussed this.”
“I don’t need these people babysitting me. They talk down to me.”
The dishwasher was running in the kitchen and making an annoying grinding sound. Louis put down the grocery bags on the kitchen table and shut off the dishwasher. He didn’t want to talk about his job. Before Jason was hired, Louis had been fairly content with it. He had never been as ambitious as his father. Louis had too many outside interests. He liked painting with watercolors and would sometimes hike the trails near his home looking for scenic views that he could paint. He enjoyed traveling to remote places: the Cook Islands in the South Pacific, Easter Island off the Chilean Coast. A demanding job would never allow for two or three week vacations. Ever since learning about the Battle of the Alamo as a kid, he’d been fascinated by the topic and had read every book he could find on it. He had a friend who taught American history at the local high school and Louis once came to her classroom and gave a lecture on the Texas Revolution.
Louis started putting away the groceries. When was the last time he’d painted? When was the last time he took a really nice trip?
He wished he could talk to his father about Evan. Evan had been Louis’s partner, and they’d recently broken up. Evan had gotten fed up with Louis’s unhappiness. “Why don’t you just quit that dead-end job?” Evan had said to him one evening. They were in the living room. Evan was placing sticky traps for mice.
“And do what, Evan? What?”
“Do absolutely nothing. Rest. Look after yourself. Lose the weight.”
“But if you’re looking for a job, isn’t it better to have one?”
Louis handed Evan another trap and Evan placed it in a closet. “I’ll cover our expenses,” Evan said.
“I don’t want to put that kind of strain on our relationship.”
“Jeez, you won’t even let me help you.”
Louis couldn’t blame Evan for getting fed up but Louis had never expected him to break up with him. Whenever Louis would get home from work, Evan would be running on their treadmill, the smell of that night’s dinner, often Italian food, livening up the house. “I’m warming the treadmill up for you, Lou,” Evan said to him one night. Evan’s dark curly hair was sweat drenched, his moustache overgrown.
“Maybe after dinner,” Louis said, unbuttoning his shirt.
“You’re procrastinating again, Lou.”
“You don’t have the commute I have.”
“But you want to lose weight more than anything.”
“I’m famished, Evan.”
Louis missed Evan’s texts, which Evan would send to him throughout the day. “Picture Jason with food in his teeth.” The texts would make him laugh and, for a while, he’d feel better about his job. Sometimes, Louis still heard Evan’s voice. “Everything will be all right, my Lou, Lou. And, if things aren’t, well then, so be it, nothing’s worth your peace of mind.”
Louis’s mother had known that Louis was gay. If she were alive, he could talk to her about the breakup. Neither she nor he had ever told his dad about his sexuality. It was too late now. Why disappoint the old guy even further?
“The remote ran out of batteries, Louie!” yelled his father from the living room. “I can’t change the station!”
“Give me a minute, Dad,” Louis said.
“I’ve been watching ESPN all day! Put on CNN for me, would you?”
The following Wednesday, Louis was in his cubicle, sitting at his desk, when he realized that it was time to go home. He checked his Seiko. If he left now, he might be able to catch the 5:45 out of Grand Central.
In the office’s lobby, Louis pressed the elevator’s call button. A few moments later, the light above the elevator bank came on and the elevator doors opened. Out stepped Jason. He was dressed in a trench coat and leather gloves. “You’re leaving?” he asked, his question more an accusation than inquiry.
Louis, who’d thought Jason had already left for the day, said, “I figured I would , , ,”
“I just stepped out for some sushi. Being from the private sector, I’m not used to these early hours. So how’s that motion? Someone told me it’s still not out.”
“The printing company took forever to return those documents but I finally finished the copying. I’ll put the motion together tomorrow and have it served.”
“I don’t like serving motions on the last day.”
Outside Louis’s office building, night had already fallen. At Fulton Street and Broadway, Louis hurried down a set of underground stairs. At the turnstile, he swiped his MetroCard and ran onto the subway platform. If the subway didn’t come soon, Louis would miss the 5:45. As he waited for the train, the platform began filling up with commuters. Where was the train? Where was it? Then a horn blared. He stepped to the edge of the platform and saw a light. Thank God.
Louis got off the subway at 42nd Street. If he were to have any hope of making the 5:45 train, he’d have to move his ass. He started his mad dash. Not a pretty sight, his 5’9”, 285 lb body, flabby and sleep-deprived, looking as if at any moment it might belly flop onto the floor. In the Grand Central Terminal’s Main Concourse, there was a restless sea of people. In Louis’s twenty years of commuting, he had never seen such a crowd, people standing elbow to elbow. What was going on? “Pardon me,” he said, as he pushed his way through the throng.
The display board explained the situation: The Harlem line was experiencing delays of over an hour due to police activity in the vicinity of Ossining. What in God’s name?
A woman with buckteeth was standing next to him. “Do you know what this is about?” he asked her.
“Must be an accident,” she said.
“Have they made an announcement?”
“I just got here.”
He looked at the clock atop the information booth. He could be stuck here for hours. His knees felt wobbly. His stomach grumbled. Might as well get a drink. He trudged up the stairs to the balcony level. Looking down at the crowd of upturned faces, he felt a little like a performer on stage.
Cipriani Dolci, a bar on the balcony level, was packed with other stranded commuters. Louis maneuvered his way to the bar and ordered a glass of merlot.
“Someone killed themselves,” he overheard a man behind him say.
“Again?” a woman’s voice said.
The handsome bow-tied bartender brought Louis his drink. Noticing a few feet of standing room on the other side of the bar, Louis squeezed between some people and made his way over to the space. Another suicide? How can that be? He began drinking his wine.
Then a heavyset man in a pinstriped suit said to a woman, “I hope the motherfucker suffered.”
The woman, who was staring at her phone, her long-nailed fingers tap dancing on the screen, said, “Well there are better ways to end your life, John.”
“Drink yourself to death.”
The woman poked the man’s paunch with her phone.
“Well, if you’re going to kill yourself,” he said, “you shouldn’t inconvenience an entire city.”
Louis took a sip of wine. God, it was another suicide. How awful. A few minutes later, he looked down at the display board. Delays of up to an hour still. He needed to get out of here. He needed more space. He went to drink from his glass but it was empty. That was fast.
Outside the train terminal, it was cold. He tightened his scarf and allowed the night to take him in. With a slight buzz, he walked across 42nd Street. He didn’t know where he was headed. He just knew he wanted another drink and some food.
He ended up at the Bryant Park Grill. The restaurant was warm and brightly lit. He sat at the bar, and the bartender, orange-headed and freckle-faced, threw a coaster on the bar like he was dealing a card from the bottom of the deck. “What will it be?”
“A glass of the house merlot.” A TV was on, and Louis looked up at the screen. The Main Concourse’s restless sea of people. The bartender came over with Louis’s drink, and Louis nodded at the screen. “That’s where I was. I had to get out of there. I couldn’t stay.”
“You’re in a much better place,” the bartender said.
“Do you know what happened?”
“Haven’t a clue.”
“Someone said a suicide.”
“Would you like a menu?”
“Please.”
The bartender brought Louis a menu. Louis studied it as carefully as he would a contract at work. “I’ll have the tuna tacos to start.”
On the TV was a blond reporter with red lipstick. She was speaking into a microphone. The TV’s sound was down so Louis couldn’t hear what she was saying. When his tuna tacos arrived, he loosened his striped tie and dug in. The tuna was fresh. Smothered with avocado. Delicious. Yum. He ordered another glass of merlot.
A replay of a college football game was on the TV now. Had the trains started running? Louis checked his phone. No. Still delays. But there was news about what had happened: a high school kid had jumped in front of a train at Ossining. What in God’s name was going on? Louis sipped his merlot. Then he read some more: the kid was from the same school as the other kid. They must have known each other.
High school could be tough. In Louis’s sophomore year, because his dad had gotten promoted, his family moved from Connecticut to Long Island. Louis hated the new school. He didn’t know anyone. He tried out for the football team and had gotten cut. He failed an Advanced Placement Trigonometry class. In the spring, he came down with an awful case of cystic acne. His back and chest still had the scars.
The high school boys that Louis had seen on the train would usually be paging through textbooks, punching numbers into calculators, chewing on pens.
“Another glass of wine?” the bartender asked Louis.
“You’re a mind reader.”
The bartender refilled Louis’s glass. “So what do you do for a living?”
“I’m a paralegal.”
“For who?”
“The State Liquidation Bureau.”
“What’s that?”
Louis gave the bartender his usual line: “When a financial services firm, like an insurance company, goes belly up, we become the insolvent entity’s caretaker.”
The bartender looked as though he wanted to say something but didn’t. He then hurried away as if the chef had just called him into the kitchen. A few more minutes passed—Louis finished his tuna tacos—and the bartender returned. “Hey buddy, one of our waitresses just told me the trains are back up and running.”
“No kidding.”
“That’s what she says.”
Louis checked his phone. The trains were, indeed, up and running, and Louis imagined hundreds of red-faced people pushing and shoving one another to get to their respective tracks. He was in no mood to play the role of a gladiator. His night was shot anyway.
“Are you going to order more food, sir?” the bartender asked.
“I am,” Louis said. “The rack of lamb sounded nice.”
By the time Louis finished the lamb—and three more glasses of the house merlot—it was close to 11:00 p.m. He threw on his overcoat and picked up his briefcase. An 11:33 train out of Grand Central would get him home at 1:11 a.m.
Outside, it had gotten even colder, and, as he walked across 42nd Street, he wished he had brought a hat. He was a little unsteady on his feet. With the amount of wine he’d drunk, not to mention the late hour, he’d have to call in sick the next day.
Would Jason fire him? No. Though Jason would want to, Human Resources would never allow it. Not for calling in sick anyway, and, Louis imagined Jason putting the motion together all by himself. He smiled.
When he stepped into Grand Central Terminal’s Main Concourse, it was empty except for a few people standing by the information booth. Now why couldn’t this place always be like this? So quiet, so beautiful. He looked up at the high ceiling and felt as if he were standing in a Gothic cathedral.
He checked the display board. The 11:33 was coming in on track 34. He wandered over to the steps that led to the balcony level and sat on them.
Then the two dead high school boys appeared, one on either side of him.
“Why did you do it?” he asked the boy on his right.
The boy, who had braces on his teeth, said, “There seemed no point to anything anymore, Louis.”
Louis nodded and turned to the other boy. “And you, son?”
The boy had bright blue eyes. It looked as if he’d been crying. “It was the only way I could think of to stop the pain, mister.”
Louis clenched his fists. “I know how you feel, boys.”
“You do?” the bright-eyed boy said.
“Yes. I was in high school once.”
“I tried telling my dad , , ,”
“I wish I would have known,” Louis said, his lower lip trembling like the river. Then he went to put his arms around the boys but they disappeared.
He looked around the terminal and then folded his arms. No one had seen him. He shook his head. What was he doing?
He struggled to his feet. The terminal was swaying like the cargo boats he’d sometimes see on the Hudson. He checked Seiko. The train would be here in eight minutes.
